When men go bad

I started writing this in January 2011, and I think I will finally complete and publish it.

"You know it was the worst relationship of your life when even after years of not being together, the man still brings immense grief to you. By his words as well as his actions.

I've been in love a few times, but there are sometimes when you let go of all your mental boundaries and give in to one person more than you have ever given in to anybody. And you give and give, while he takes and takes. This, I realize, is not your love, but your conviction that this man is worth it all. You have convinced yourself that your happiness is in his hands and that's a dangerous place to be in. Because your happiness lies in your hands alone. And you must de-convince yourself that the key to your life lies in another person's hand.

How many people do I know around me who have been trying to move on from their equally unstable lives and while you'd think that being older would make people wiser, how untrue that is! We continue to make the same mistakes over and over again, knowing that nothing good is going to come out of it. Well, it's 2011 now, and for a change, I have a resolution. To really move on. To a more stable life, that is. This isn't about my relationships with men anymore. It's about doing something more meaningful with my life. To steer it in the direction that makes it less fun in the short term, but stronger in the long term. The whole cycle or work, parties, meaningless chatter, unmindful jabs at others...it must stop. Well, maybe not the unmindful jabs bit :)

And so it begins."

It's been 3 months since I wrote this and I don't know how I got the will to do what I set out to do, because my will has always failed me in the past when it comes to staying away from my beloved friends. But somehow, I managed. It has paid, and how! I am far less stressed out and value myself far more. All goes to show, that all you need is some courage to let go. It's never too late!

Bagaland

Once upon a time, in a big town called Bom Baim, lived two women who heard of an enchanted kingdom called Bagaland. While they toiled away in their masters' castles in Bom Baim, they longed for a visit to this land of freedom and beer. After much patience and perseverance, their masters gave them a week off to explore this new, shiny place. And that week changed their lives forever! It made them aware of the powers they possessed; powers that only came to them when they were in Bagaland! Oh how wonderful it would be if their powers would work in Bom Baim too!

A year passed by and they never forgot Bagaland, their time spent there etched in their memory. We should go again! And  this time, we'll take our friends so they can discover their powers too! And that's how Babita, Dimple, Jennifer and Sameera took a bus from Bom Baim to Bagaland in the pleasant month of December 2010.

AND SO IT BEGINS...

They idea of going in a sleeper bus was Dimpi's. All apprehensions were cast away, though, once they got in. It was clean, smelled good and the beds were big enough for a comfortable night of sleep. "If only we were sharing our beds with someone special instead of each of us!!" they all screamed! "Shhh" said someone at the back of the bus. "Shhh shhhh shhhh shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh" they shushed back.

"I want to pee real bad!" said Jenny suddenly, "I mean, I peed before I left, but I wanna pee again!"
"I wonder if the bus will stop anywhere. Maybe we should ask the bus guy." said Bobby.
"I'm not gonna ask the bus guy! You ask him!"
"Oh, you two! I'll ask the bus guy!" said the ever outspoken Dimpi. She tapped the bus guy. "Will you make a stop at a restroom?"
"No. Next stop is Vashi. There's no restroom at the stop though." he quipped back.
"Well, then stop at some restroom in between. She wants to pee!" Dimpi pointed at Jenny.
Jenny's face turned red as she exclaimed "Why are you pointing at me like that?!?!"
And they all burst out laughing! Bus guy included!
A lot of talking about men later, it was time to sleep. Bobby humped Dimpi in the romantic bus space with curtains to save their modesty. Jenny cried on the phone. Classic case of candy ya gum.

At 11 am the next day, they were at Mapusaland. A lot of bargaining with taxi guys ensued. When they finally got a taxi, they first went hunting for some beer. It was amazing how difficult it was for them to find beer. Like no water in an oasis! After two attempts, they finally managed to get themselves Kingfisher and Budweiser. Bobby's thirst for Kings would have to wait. The girls who went to get beers disappeared for 15 minutes and came back with hats. Much to the irritation of the cab driver who kept waiting for them to arrive! "I will charge you extra" he threatened. Being the women they were, not much heed was paid.
And that's when they had their first blonde moment.
"Who's the chief minister of Goa?" asked Dimpi.
"The same as Maharashtra's chief minister, no?" said Sam as we all looked at her for a few seconds and burst out laughing!
"Why would you say that, Sammy!?!" asked Jenny.
"I don't know! Because Maharashtra and Goa is the same region for Vodafone!"
And this line would be held against Sammy for the rest of her life!
A half an hour cab ride later, they reached the magical land of booze, parties, sand and sea.

They were staying at the fascinating Hotel Angelina. Rooms were not blocked for them on the same floor and in order to stay right next to each other, the hotel gave them cheaper rooms. 900 bucks a night for a double room. No TV and no AC. But none were needed. The rooms were perfect! ID proofs later, they went to their rooms to freshen up.

It was a Saturday and they had decided to go to the Saturday Night Bazaar. With no vehicle, they enquired and were told that it was a 10-15 minute walking distance and so they decided to walk. Ten minutes down the line and it seeming farther away, another inquiry told them that it was at least half an hour more if they went walking. Cabs were asking for 200 bucks and autos for 100. That's when they decided to check if the enchanted land still brought our their powers. In no time, they got an auto for 50 bucks, the driver specially asking them not to tell anyone that he gave them that rate!

And who might they meet at the Bazaar? Vicky Ladha, with his wife and cousins. It was weird coz while Bobby, Jenny, Dimpi and Sammy were dressed as skimpily as possible, there stood Vicky and his wife, not just fully clad but with extra jackets on.
Ooh, Vicky's wife won't think too highly of us, eh? were their echoing sentiments. Well, they were in Bagaland, and this was their birth right! Those guys should take some of their clothes off!

After a whole lot of shopping in the Bazaar, they sat down with some food and beer, and watched some performances. Bobby couldn't take her eyes off the African acrobats as they flexed their naturally muscular bodies. At the end of the performance, they asked for the audience to participate in a fire stunt and Sammy always being the most enthusiastic one, obliged. Needless to say, she chickened out and just ducked through the fire instead of bending her body backwards. However, for the sheer spirit of wanting to participate, the other girls gave her a huge round of applause while eating some yummy jacket potatoes with cheese!

After the bazaar, it was time to party. An auto ride back, they quickly hit the bars after keeping all their money at home. No money would be spent on drinks. And the power bearing had begun in full swing.

While all days passed in beach bumming and all nights passed with a lot of alcohol, some memories remained etched on their minds.

1. Sammy's friend with a tooth stud
2. Bobby and Dimpi making out at Cape Town Cafe
3. People telling Bobby to agree to raise kids with Dimpi (!!!)
4. All four women having cell phone issues
5. Jenny going "What! What?! Whaaatttt?????"
6. Sammy going "That's so tacky!"
7. Dimpi going "On what basis?!?!?!"
8. Remembering the Maharashtra and Goa joke and applying it to India and Sri Lanka
9. Making friends in the loo!
10. Bobby losing everyone with no phone in her hand
11. Bobby finding Jenny (who had Bobby's phone) at the bar doing Tequila shots with random people and confiscating her phone back!
12. Sunrise at the beach after realizing that the day is about to break...beer still in hand
13. Meeting irritating men and then being rescued by a random car
14. Meeting more irritating men on the beach while getting henna tattoos done
15. Coke
16. Free shots!
17. Jenny's blood on the bed! What? How?
18. Water sports
19. Bobby and Dimpi sharing a kiss while para-sailing!
20. Dimpi introspecting
21. Ab ba ba!
22. Every night is a free drinks night for ladies at Titos!
23. Jenny asking on the third day "So which beach is this?"
24. Using the balcony to get to the other room
25. Iranian men painting the ladies' portraits and caricatures
26. Meeting a Justin Beiber/ (one of the ) Jonas Brothers lookalike
27. Meeting his beautiful and funny girlfriend
28. Bobby and Dimpi meet the woman who made the jacket potatoes in a bar. And take her number!
29. Jenny and Bobby meeting a man who knew all the places the girls had been to the night before!

On the last day, Jenny had to leave at 5 am while the rest at 3 pm. At 4:45 am, Jenny said her goodbyes, left the bar, went to her room, packed as quick as she could and left just in time! Later that day, Sammy, Bobby and Dimpi left for the airport. While Bobby had a 5 pm flight, the other two said theirs was at 6, but would come along with Bobby. When they reached the airport at 3:30, they inquired at the check-in counter if they could take an earlier flight, only to be told that their flight was at 5 and not 6, and was the next flight out! And it wasn't that the timing had changed, they just assumed it was at 6 even when the ticket in their hands said 5! Blonde moments galore!

And with that, they were back to Bom Baim. Back to their masters, toiling away again. Hoping to visit the enchanted land once again, hopefully in another year!

Girls in Bagaland!

A new low for Tata Indicom

Tata Indicom broadband customer service hit a new low today when they told us that they couldn’t lodge a complaint! We were given two reasons for this:

1.       There is already an open complaint

2.       The system shows no problem in connection so a no-connection complaint cannot be raised!!!

I cannot believe that so much bullshit can be given out. While the old complaint was raised on 8^th October, another complaint was raised again on the 13^th October. At that time, there was no issue in raising a new complaint. I am tired and seriously don’t know what course of action to take now. I want to take this up with somebody but I don’t know who. On top of that, the customer care executive kept us on hold for a total of half an hour. When asked to speak with a supervisor, we were kept on hold and told lines were busy! My dad finally told the idiot to walk up to the supervisor and get him on the phone. The supervisor was equally irritating and told us the same thing that the customer service executive was telling us.

His solution to the problem was to change the open complaint, which was unacceptable because the older complaint was for www.kotak.com not opening (a constantly recurring problem that Tata Indicom has decided not to resolve). After almost an hour on the phone, we were told that it would just not be possible to lodge a fresh complaint. The best part comes now – I called back, spoke with someone else and got the complaint raised!

Every time I get off a call with Tata Indicom, I end up being frustrated and in a foul mood. Do I just write to the Tatas? Or should I switch ISPs? One day, I’m gonna record a conversation and upload it for everybody’s listening pleasure. And why does the internet conk off every 3^rd weekend? And why does kotak.com not open repeatedly?

I have written against these morons earlier too, but some organizations never learn.
http://daysofalps.blogspot.com/2010/06/what-to-do-with-tata-indicom.html
http://daysofalps.blogspot.com/2010/04/my-daddy-beats-your-daddys-ass.html

I hate you, Tata Indicom. Eat dirt.

Solitude

When was the last time you wished for solitude? Before a few days back, I can't think when. Most of last year, I have been wishing to overcome single-hood. I have looked around, dated a bit, been disappointed in the worst ways possible. cried in my weakest moments, punched in my strongest...! It's pretty much been a roller-coaster of emotions for me.

Pan camera to the last few days. Note my daily schedule:
06:00 - Wake up
08:00 - Breakfast
08:15 - Move ass out of hotel and walk to work
08:30 - At desk, laptop open, work begins
17:30 (on an average, not counting the day I left at 20:00) - Walk back to hotel
17:45 - In room, changing clothes
18:00 - In hotel restaurant reading a book
19:30 - Dinner
20:30 - TV or movie on laptop
22:30 - Sleep

My interactions with people are limited to people at work, the hotel receptionists, the restaurant stewards and stewardesses and the occasional old man asking me if I'm wearing Coco Chanel! Oh and of course, the countless people I smile and say hello to, everywhere I go - hotel, streets, office, bus, wherever. On the weekend, I went to Brussels and walked the streets with nothing but a map, some cigarettes, my passport and cash. I saw couples in love, kids having fun and old people generally chilling. I ate waffles bought from the street and heard live music in almost every alley in the heart of the city.

And I'd have thought that all this should make someone want to have company even more. But it didn't. Quite the contrary in fact. I love spending entire evenings doing nothing but reading my books and drinking the occasional beer alongside. It's such a welcome change from the long working hours that lead to a need for bouts of drinking (stress can really make you want to unwind with a drink) that leads to lesser sleep that leads to crappy mornings that leads to not wanting to work the long hours of the week. I feel better, I'm finishing my books in record speed and I don't go to bed thinking what my future is going to be like. Simply because my present is so relaxing! No tension, no concern, no stress. I sometimes find myself looking for more work to do (unlike how I hated waking up in the mornings to get to work back home) and I cannot say enough on how I love the hotel room all to myself! Nobody to ask what I'm doing, why I'm not eating, what are my plans for the day, whether I'll be home for dinner, who's on the phone or who I'm meeting in the evening. I don't want to make my parents seem like monsters, because they're not. They're the most understanding people on the planet (well in some ways at least), but some irrelevant nuances get very annoying when you have to deal with them everyday. And I'm sure somewhere deep down, they feel the same way about me as well. I am SO difficult at times, I wonder how they keep their cool.

Coming back to the point, I find that the constant push for me to excel in a field that I don't care much about breaks me back home. Not that I'm doing anything different here, but that push isn't there. I'm not expected to work a long week in lieu for a life to myself. I sometimes wonder if I did the right thing by taking back my old job. I wasn't making enough money writing, but should I have tried harder? I'd sure have loved 10 hrs of writing a day rather than 10 hrs of rationalizing application landscapes!!!

I picked up a book from the hotel bar yesterday and reading it made me feel like getting back to writing. All I need is inspiration, and working where I am today, gives me none. Back home, all I want to do at the end of the day is to talk about anything but work, or better still, not talk at all. And I don't get to do that. Most days I come home to a phone call from work, asking for more work to be done. And that's because that's just how it works in Mumbai if your employer has given you a laptop. Time to yourself....what is that?

That is solitude.

And I'm loving every bit of it.

Do you know what is expected of you?

Ok this has been pending for far too long. Many months back, I took a survey with a lot of anonymously willing participants about what they expect from dating and relationships. Questions involved items that put people off in the short as well as long term and how they reacted to cheating.

And....(drum roll)........here are the results!!!
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Q: What do u think a man/woman should not tell/ask/do on the first 3 dates?

50% of men surveyed did not want their salary or wealth to be discussed while they've just started dating a woman.
58% of men did not want women to talk about anybody's exes on the first 3 dates.

For the women, results were varied, with a mix of no naughty language, no talking about exes, no showing off, not being rude, etc. Surprisingly, only one woman did not want to talk about her age and another surprising 43% did not want to talk about their salary / wealth either!

(Btw...hence proved, men are predictable and women are complicated!)
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So when asked what people had learned from their past dating experiences, the men were obviously all around the place!

Q: What have u learnt from ur past dates....what should u avoid saying to the girl/guy?


Interesting answers from the men were:

• Do not give advice
• Do not say I love you
• Do not ask for marriage (!!!!)
• Do not compare her with others
• Do not give her professional criticism
• Avoid tactless jokes
• Do not talk to her about something she is not interested in

My favourite response, though, has to be one that was given to me by 2 guys - DO NOT get her drunk!!! Haha. I see that some people have had problems with drunk dates quite a bit!

Women on the other hand, knew exactly what men did not want to hear in the first three dates. Almost everybody knew that talking about salary and exes was a big no-no!
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Q: What do u think your man/woman should not do ever in the relationship?

42% men did not want their women to compare them with other men, while other popular answers were no hurting ego, no lying and no demeaning friends and family.

For women, the expectations of what a long term partner should not do were exactly the opposite. All participants but one did not want their partner to physically or verbally abuse them. So no belittling, hitting or being rude. Simple! Everything else can be dealt with.
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Q: Is cheating once ok? Provided he/she is truly apologetic later?

This was really interesting. 92% of all men said that their partner cheating was absolutely not okay. This, compared to only 57% of women saying the same thing. After a lot of prodding, 25% men said they would forgive their woman if she was truly apologetic (and other best case scenarios). Which meant a change of mind for 17% men. For women, the number didn't change much.


ANALYSIS!!

Honestly, I don't know how men and women live with each other with such a difference in expectations. While women have a multitude of no-nos while they are choosing a man, once they have committed to a relationship, there's not much that will break it for them. However, for men it's the other way round. While they have very low expectations from a woman they are dating, they want a lot from the woman they are looking at from a long term perspective.

Of course, this study is limited by scope. All survey participants were urban men and women between 25 to 28 years of age, earning approximately between 5 to 15 lakhs a year.

Why we need new bags

So why is it that when I look around, people my age are either married or complicated? Or, well, going to be married. There has to be some correlation with age and not wanting to make things work! The older you get, the more rigid you become, the more expectations you have, the lesser you wanna compromise and the more ready you are to look at other options.


Thy name be Rigid
He has to be intelligent
He has to be agnostic or atheist
He has to be non-vegetarian
Preferably not in the same field of work
Preferably large shoulders

He has to be somebody who makes me feel “This is the one!”
He has to be somebody my parents will like
He has to be experimental in bed
He has to make tons of money
Preferably cute boyish looks

He has to be someone I liked the instant I saw him
He has to be someone every other girl wants to have
Preferably plays the guitar


Me, compromise?
Use your laptop. This is mine!
I want to go for that chick flick whether you like it or not! And you will bloody well come!
If you’re not feeling well, I’ll go out with someone else
Cheating is okay if you’re not giving me any candy
We do it when I want, where I want

Opt-in, opt-out
Learnt this way back in 2004 for a subject called customer relationship management. To opt-in is to explicitly select an option among many options. To opt-out is to explicitly unselect an option among many pre-selected options. When I was 18, I was in the opting in stage. Now, I keep opting out.

Something good may come out of this (it better!). With higher standards than what I had at 18, when I find the right person, it’ll be better than who I would’ve chosen at 18. And yeah, looking back I see how progressive my choices were over the years! The downside is that I don’t know how long it will take. And I don’t like it when there’s no plan. Well, there is no plan. There is hope, but no plan. And being the non-religious types, I’m quite impatient with hope.

Me and my unmarried girl friends are all of 26 now. Everyone is complicated relationship-wise. A guy friend says we just like to make it complicated when it actually isn’t. It’s either on or not on. This guy friend is married. Easy for him to say. At 26, there’s pressure – parental, peer, u name it! And the peer pressure sucks the most. People start getting married and doing their own couple things. You end up looking for a group with more single people. We recently got an old friend back after everyone in his current group was married and he became single. He needed to hang out with single people like us. He told me he thinks it’s the right time to get married because otherwise everyone will get married and he’ll regret not looking for a partner when the time was right! You see the pressure!

No, I don’t want to get married. I’m not ready for it yet. But I miss some things that come with a relationship. Some things that dating doesn’t do for me. It’s a feeling of comfort. Of special moments. Of things that only remind you of that significant other. Of wanting to bring back something special from a trip for that special somebody. Of sharing a stupid thought you had, without the other person judging your intelligence because they know you long enough to know it was just an aberration. Of simply sleeping with your head on somebody’s shoulder at night. And that somebody can’t just be anybody. When u think of that shoulder, most of you will picture a face on it.

And that, fellow people, is known as baggage.